Monday, April 10, 2017

Mass Effect: Andromeda, A Fun Adventure In Space

I like the Mass Effect series a lot and I was excited for Mass Effect: Andromeda. Set between the events of Mass Effect 2 and 3, this was a whole new space adventure with new heroes and villains set in a different galaxy. Once the game arrived I was raring to get started. The character customization offers a lot of variety and diversity which is great. I tinkered around until I got my female Ryder to where I wanted. I also thought it was great that you could customize how your twin looks (You can play as the male Ryder twin or the female one) and I was thrilled that Ryder's dad Alec looks like his kids depending on your customization. You can select the difficulty to what you want and if the game is proving to be too challenging, you can lower the difficulty quite easily in the game settings.

My female Ryder rocking the purple hair.

Customized my twin with awesome red hair.

The introduction to Ryder and the story is interesting with the idea of exploration and looking for golden worlds which are locations that are strong candidates for settlement or would provide resources for survival. This being Mass Effect, of course things don't go as planned and that's where Andromeda begins. There really isn't much of a tutorial when you start, but the game does give you tips here and there for how to do certain things and where you can find things in your items menu.

The environments for Andromeda are beautiful and there's lots of exploration. I had the most fun just exploring and scanning planets which looked amazing. The Tempest looks a lot like the Normandy ship with a few differences such as it's a bit smaller and sleeker meant to be a scout ship. You also spend a lot more time on the Tempest as you explore this new world.

Ryder exploring a new planet.

The story for Andromeda is interesting although it feels like a familiar one especially when it comes to the enemy aliens, the Kett. Their attitudes and ideas feel very much like the Borg from Star Trek. I still found the Kett interesting and I found myself wondering if it was possible that their society was influenced by the Reapers in some ways.

The introduction of the new alien race the Angara I loved because their society was intriguing and to me they seemed like a beautiful alien jungle cat race. I really liked the character Jaal because he was a great character with an inquisitive spirit, but he was also brave and kind. I genuinely liked him the moment he was introduced.

Jaal and a fellow Angara.

There are opportunities for character romance also and they aren't just limited to your ship mates. There are a few romance options on a couple of different planets. You can also do loyalty missions for your friends which will make your relationships with them stronger. One of my favorites was a mission for my Krogan friend Drack. Drack was another favorite character for me because he was gruff, but underneath it all he actually cared about others a great deal. I also just love the Krogan. They're a pretty badass race and Drack reminded me a lot of two other Krogans I really liked, Wrex and Grunt.

Drack is cool without even trying.

Combat in the game is fairly standard. There are cool down timers for some of your abilities which can be a bit frustrating, but it's not a deal breaker. I did have fun with the combat and some of the fights I had the most fun with were fighting giant AI robots known as Architects. You can direct where your squad goes if you want to, but it's a little clunky. Generally I just let them handle themselves and they were fine.

I do wish the user menu was a little more streamlined, but it wasn't such a big deal that I couldn't figure out where things were. Leveling is pretty easy and you can upgrade your skills depending on your fighting style and those of your squad. There are strike team missions also where you can send a team out while you're adventuring or you can team up with your friends and play together on multiplayer. There isn't much of a tutorial for it, but they are fun to play.

Architect fights are fun!

There are a ton of side missions. I like side quests and they're fun for exploring, but with Andromeda this was a mixed bag for me. Many of the side missions are fun to do and some of them not so much. There are also side quests known as additional tasks. Unfortunately, a lot of these are tedious and far too many are glitched. On one task it would not complete at all so I could never finish it which was frustrating.

These were not the only things that weren't great in the game. No, it wasn't the animation. Honestly, I didn't think the animation was that bad. I noticed maybe one or two characters not emoting enough, but that's about it. They have since fixed that with a recent patch. Anyway, other things that bothered me were that every now and then the game would lag horribly to the point that I could not interact with anything or it would just freeze completely. That is incredibly irritating when I'm trying to play a game and then I have to reboot because of something like that. Sometimes the map marker was inaccurate and I would have to run around trying to figure out where to go because it would either be next to the location or it didn't properly identify that the location was a cave.

The other thing that was frustrating were all the damn sudoku style glyph puzzles; Remnant puzzles. I seriously hated the Remnant puzzles. Yes they were inherently part of the main story, but they were time consuming and terribly repetitive. I was grateful when I had completed my last Remnant puzzle. They detracted from the fun of the game.

I hated these puzzles.

In spite of those flaws in Mass Effect: Andromeda I still had fun playing the game and liked it a lot. I feel that perhaps Bioware should have waited a little longer to release the game to address those issues, but it's still a good game for what it is. My favorite part of all the Mass Effect games has always been the exploration and there was plenty in this game for me. I also loved the beautiful views of all the planets I visited. Mass Effect: Andromeda isn't a completely perfect game, but it is a fun adventure in space.

You can't beat the view!

*Mass Effect: Andromeda is playable on the following platforms: Playstation 4, Xbox One, and Microsoft Windows

About Me

I'm married and a mother, but manage to find time for my gaming, writing, and film viewing. I'm also a huge nerd when it comes to anything with Hello Kitty or giant robots. It's a living. Mother Gamer is just my opinion about my personal gaming experience and other nerdy things I love. You may not agree and that's okay. Variety is what makes the world an awesome place. Happy gaming!